Otaku Tangents
by Tangent
Summary: Following up Metroanime's Otaku PC story is what happens to 'me' afterwards, as my transformed self is dragged across dimensional bariers. What is a little warrior caste gremlin to do, turned lose in the great big multiverse?
1. X-Com Blues

Tangent's Tangents  
A Self Insert Fanfict from Beyond by Tangent!  
Based on a possible after effect of "Otaku PC" by Metroanime.  
Expanded upon with the express permission of Metroanime.  
Possible additional scenes by Metroanime (doubtful, but you never know...)  
Pre-reading and editing assistance by:  
Metroanime;  
Lord Talon;  
Howard Melton;  
Nevrmore;  
And some guy named Steve  
  
DISCLAIMER: 'Ranma ½' and all characters therein belong to Rumiko Takahashi, Shogagukan, Kitty, and Viz Video. 'Sailor Moon' and all characters therein belong to Naoko Takeuchi and Toei Animation Co. Ltd. Tenchi, Bubblegum Crisis, Riding Bean, Cyber Punk, Shadowrun, X-Com, and sundry others all belong to their respective creators and associated companies as well (which should worry some of you...). The original concept for the Otaku PC fusion was Metroanime's. This fanfict has been produced for my own enjoyment and to pass on without profit. Other characters that come into play in this fanfict may or may not be pulled from other sources (including other fanficts, RPGs, manga, anime, literature, or possibly even *GASP* American comic books!).  
  
CHAPTER ONE:  
  
Tangent blinked.  
  
Having come up with a plan to deal with what she had previously thought to be a free roaming, artifact level, techno-spiritual doomsday virus, only to bear witness as the darn thing 'hatched' and 'flew' away into nth dimensional space, dragging her through a few dimensional barriers in the process, had left her awe struck. Having all memories of the portions of its code that she had personally read ripped from her mind had left her disoriented. The large crescent wrench hitting the back of her head filled her vision with little stars...  
  
...  
  
...Tangent awakened bound and gagged, secured to a gurney in some sort of motorized transport (a flying one from the resonance she was getting through her strakes). She was still nude, as she had been since shortly after becoming a female gremlin.Which had either been about a week ago or over a hundred years ago, depending on which perspective she chose to follow. That she now remembered actually having been a male human by the name of Allen or Alex or something like that was noted for later perusal. That she had apparently lost the memories that had accumulated over a few thousand years of technological development, and had lost the part of herself that remembered being an Empress was also noted.  
  
A wave of dizziness and nausea passed over Tangent, and she became aware of a throbbing headache. She felt weak, and doubted that she'd be able to stand under her own power, even if she hadn't been tied to a gurney at the moment. Not that doing so would have done much good, as her sensation of 'down' was meandering randomly instead of orienting either towards the true gravity well or whatever surface she happened to be roughly in contact with. Remembering the last time that she had a concussion (back in her former life as that guy... Alec? Eric? Ricky?), Tangent tried to review a few questions to herself in an attempt to self-diagnose how bad it was.  
  
The current president was... An actor? Harry Potter perhaps? That sounded about right for the time being.  
  
The year was... Vanilla extract multiplied by the square root of George Washington Carver. That didn't seem right for some reason, but just why escaped her at the moment, so she gave that one a pass, hoping to be more confident about it later.  
  
Err... She was pretty sure that Beethoven wasn't a heavy metal superstar, but did he do rap or jazz?  
  
Tentative conclusion: BAD head injury. No sudden changes in size for a while, unless she wanted to risk an anu... inna... abba... popping a blood vessel somewhere vital in her noggin'. Most of the rest of her innate gremlin abilities would probably be effectively "off-line" as well, until the problem cleared up. She could still 'hear' broadcast bands via her strakes, but she couldn't discriminate among them well enough to split radio stations from broadcast television. Nor were any of the signals being automatically decoded into a format that made sense. It was all just gibberish for the time being.  
  
She doubted that she could generate enough of a charge to zap a mosquito, although it *would* be amusing to watch one fly off of her and do a header due to the toxin levels in her bloodstream...  
  
Hmmm... was that an erotic feeling? Her nipples were hard, and she was unaccountably more aware than usual about her neither regions, but she didn't feel any actual desire  
  
That clinched it. She remembered this much at least. Sexual reaction, without desire, in conjunction with a head injury definitely placed her in concussion territory. That meant that she was at the mercy of whoever had her at the moment.  
  
"Our little visitor seems to have recovered somewhat from the blow that the mechanic had given her." Tangent turned her head to look at the speaker, a human male in his early to mid twenties by his appearance, wearing a dark riot-style uniform favored by some S.W.A.T. units that her former self had been aware of. That the words "Federal Bureau of Alien Management" were emblazoned across the front of what seemed to be a kevlar vest worried her.  
  
Human Federal Bureaus of anything tended to be rife with a thorough mix of competence, incompetence, idealism, and corruption. Exactly what combination of which anybody encountered at any given time was thus far a statistical problem that had evaded resolution by her people for quite some time. Even including the people her former human self had belonged to, which said something sad about human nature.  
  
Okay... She was, as far as she could tell, unmolested, and hadn't been taken advantage of while she had been unconscious. This suggested that this team were comprised largely of professionals.  
  
She was also still nude, other than her restraints. Although this didn't really bother her in the slightest, she was aware that humans seemed to generally frown on public nudity. Granted, she had to accept this from the memories she had from being Nick or Mike or whoever she had been, so she took it with a grain of salt. One couldn't judge a whole species by the standards of only one of its cultures after all. Still, these agents had left her nude, and didn't seem inclined to remove even their armored vests. This suggested either a cold detachment, a lack of sentiment, or a desire to intimidate her by leaving her feeling vulnerable.  
  
None of the other five had said anything in response to the comment from the one, and he had nervously slipped back into silence as a result. Looking over at the others, Tangent noted that two of them had their weapons carefully trained on her in such a manner that there was no risk of hitting the others in a cross-fire.  
  
Paranoid professional alien hunters. Well, at least they hadn't killed her while she was unconscious or disoriented. Which, given their weapons, was the only time they had a good chance of actually hitting her. No reason to aggravate the humans though.  
  
Surely this was all some sort of misunderstanding. She'd merely clear it up when they got to wherever they were taking her, and she'd be on her way again!  
  
Settling in for the rest of the trip, mentally at least, Tangent idly tried scanning the local broadcasts again, wondering about the new world that she was in. If she *was* in another dimension, this was arguably the first time this had happened to her, as the previous experience that had felt similar had actually been her transformation from a Human male into a female gremlin. At the time, she had been so confused that she hadn't even thought of scanning the local frequencies in order to find out more about the world around her.  
  
Now if only her headache would just go away. What had she been hit with anyway? A crescent wrench?  
  
* * *  
  
Jones had a few observations of his own. One was that Harrison was still a little green. Not because of his desire to chat so much, but because he had lapsed back into nervous silence when nobody responded to him. He'd either settle down and conform or grow more confident and the rest of the team would accept him and open up a bit more. Either option was fine by Jones, as long as the team remained competent in their duties.  
  
Another habit to break Harrison of was unwarranted compassion for untested aliens. He had started to cover their captive with a blanket once she was secured to the gurney, only to be stopped by the more experienced members of the team. Conner, for example, knew far too well that some Uglies could slowly form either sharp spines or lethal stingers from various locations on their bodies. That most of the members of Conner's former team had paid for that knowledge with their lives still haunted the man from time to time.  
  
Spines and stingers took a while to form or deploy, so if specialized restraints were unavailable, leaving the alien in question nude and under several sets of watchful eyes was the only option they could safely go with. Jones frowned slightly. Stingers, spines, tentacles dipped in acid... At least five catalogued breeds of the Uglies could produce them, and specialized restraints had been designed for each of them. The team had brought a set of each along when they got the call that some civilians had managed to capture an alien alive.  
  
Naturally, it turned out that the alien was a new, and uncatalogued type, apparently unrelated to the Uglies. *Of course* this meant that none of the specialized restraints that had been brought along were suitable for their intended purpose. The fact that the new alien *appeared* harmless was making the team nervous as they waited for the other shoe to drop. Harrison's attempt at humor could have taken the edge off of that anxiety, allowing the team to concentrate better, or he could have kept his comment to himself, and not provide a distraction in a tense situation.  
  
Jones would have to schedule some drills to get the team used to the new dynamics and settle in one way or another. This going on missions during a transition period had to go too, but Jones knew how likely that was.  
  
Trusting Cartman, Conner, and the others to keep an eye on their prisoner, Jones headed up front to start on his report.  
  
This alien had appeared, literally out of thin air by the accounts, outside of an autobody shop in southwestern Ohio. She had then been promptly cold-cocked by one of the mechanics using a crescent wrench. As the most serious emergency reported in the area in the past five years had been a local boy's cat getting stuck in a tree, the local authorities had deemed her to be potentially non-hostile. They had called the Bureau anyway, as a matter of prudence, even though she looked nothing like the 'Uglies'.  
  
Five invasion attempts in the past fifteen years, by a race with an admitted taste for human flesh, had left the people of earth a bit paranoid about non-humans. Jones was quite frankly surprised that this visitor had been left alive and unmutilated for them to pick up. Granted, she bore a strong resemblance to a short (roughly four feet tall) human woman, if one chose to ignore her light green skin, the large vaguely pointed ears, the tail with the tuft of hair at the end, and the broad iridescent blue antennae sticking out past her hair.  
  
Cursory examination showed that her hair was naturally a snowy white, although it was extremely fine over most of her body, like that on human child. And like a human child, the only places it was evident on her besides the tuft at the end of her tail were her cranium and eyebrows. The size of her breasts suggested that she was post-pubescent despite the lack of hair in that region, although making such assumptions about a non-human one way or the other was inadvisable.  
  
More telling was her calm examination of her situation once she had recovered consciousness. After her initial worried expression, she didn't appear to be particularly concerned about the facts that she was restrained and under armed guard. Granted, her body language *could* be completely different, but her over all external physiology seemed to be close enough to human that basic reactions should be similar between their species.  
  
The only thing absolutely certain though was that she was neither human nor an Ugly. Jones and the rest of his team would turn in their observations with their reports. After that it was up to the specialists to determine what she was.  
  
And if her people were a threat to man kind...  
  
* * *  
  
A week later, two uniformed men were confronting each other outside of a national research facility.  
  
"I'm telling you," a rather gruff and irritated man in a tan military uniform and light blue beret was practically shouting, "International Extraterrestrial Command should have been notified right away! How can we do any good if every country just *has* to get first crack at any aliens that slip through our defensive net?"  
  
"This new alien was captured easily by civilians," another man spoke calmly, unaffected by the other's bluster. His uniform was the olive green of the United States Army. "Quite frankly, X-Com's record of *incidental* human casualties leaves us rather concerned about calling you in for ground based missions on American soil."  
  
"Those were all accidents, Colonal Norris! Perfectly explainable as covered by the reports and follow up investigations!" The mans voice, while still loud and demanding, had started taking on a placating tone as well. The combination did not sound at all convincing.  
  
"Tell that to the survivors of Willow Creek, Wyoming, Colonal Harver," Col. Norris suggested in the same dry manner as before.  
  
"I wasn't aware that there were civilian survivors from the Willow Creek incident," Col. Harver admitted nervously. If Col. Norris had any observations about Col. Harvers sudden change in demeanor, he chose not to point them out... to Col. Harver at any rate.  
  
"There weren't any," admitted Col. Norris. "Which is exactly why X-Com is no longer permitted to initiate ground based missions in the United States without a team of our FBAM agents along as observers. X-Com has a record of incidental civilian casualties for thirty percent of its ground based missions, most of which involving entire populations of small towns and villages. The teams who were involved in these *accidental* massacres have never been reprimanded, or even removed from duty during the follow up investigations." If Col. Norris' irritation was begining to show, it could probably be excused.  
  
"The individuals responsible for those accidents were punished!"  
  
"Name one," Col. Norris demanded. "Name one single individual who was punished for those incidents who did not later turn out to have had nothing at all to do with them!"  
  
"Well, congradulations, Colonal Harver," a man in a dark suit interupted them. "You've managed to set off Colonal Norris. Again."  
  
"Agent Kelly," Col. Norris acknowledged the man's pressence.  
  
Col. Harver simply went silent. The FBAM agent had always made him nervous for some reason.  
  
"If you'll both follow me, I'll bring you up to date on what we know about the new alien." Agent Kelly handed each a folder and turned to enter the facility.  
  
* * *  
  
Tangent sat up in the enclosure that she had been placed in. She felt a lot better now, but was disturbed about what had happened to her when they put her through a Magnetic Resonance Scanner. Which had been nothing out of the ordinary at first. It wasn't until the thing reached her head that she had started spasming uncontrollably. By the time the scan was done, she had been rendered unconscious again.  
  
When she has awakened again, Tangent remembered being little better than a drooling idiot. For days she had behaved like an animal, without one single sentient thought floating through her head that she could now recognize as such. Not that she had been aware of her loss at the time.  
  
No, she had been a happy, curious primate with only the most basic concepts of comunication and tool use. Not even as smart as a chimp or gorrilla, really. More like a monkey of some sort.  
  
Tangent wondered if the experience would have bothered her so much if she didn't remember it all so clearly. Tangent felt for her strakes before remembering that she wouldn't be able to feel them even if they had returned. It wasn't as if they were solid. More like ethereal manifestations of specialized organs. Their absence was an indicator that something was seriously wrong with the individual missing them.  
  
Tangent did not like it at all. Not one single little bit. She absently picked up a small rock in one hand and squeezed it out of frustration, not even noticing when it crumbled under the stress.  
  
"I see that you're awake, Mint!" a voice Tangent recognized called out to her. "Would you like your breakfast now? We've got lots of yummie fruit for you!" Dr. Patterson was a bright and cheerful woman. Tangent did not feel at all comfortable with the resentment that she now felt for having been treated like an animal for the past week. At least Dr. Patterson was a primate specialist.  
  
Some of the others treated her as if she had been something even less intelligent, like a lemming...  
  
..or a radish.  
  
Crushed rock was ground into even smaller pieces by a clenched fist before Tangent sighed and reined in her anger. She was a civilized being, and she would behave as such now that she was once again able to do so.  
  
"My name is Tangent, Dr. Patterson. And yes, the fruit does sound nice, but you've been feeding me nothing but fruits and vegetables for the past week. Could I have some bacon and eggs? Or perhaps some sausage, pancakes, and an omlette?"  
  
Dr. Patterson somehow managed not to drop the tray that she was holding. "You can talk!?"  
  
"Well, now that I recovered from having my mind scrambled by the Magnetic Resonance Scanner. Why did they hold it in place around my head when I started to spasm? I'd have recovered a lot quicker if they hadn't done that..."  
  
"They were trying to find your antannae. They couldn't find them on any of the images that the scanner was producing..."  
  
"And so, naturally, they kept going back and forth, looking for them while I was experiencing something similar to an epileptic siezure. I hope that they don't treat *everyone* with such care," Tangent commented, voice dripping with sarcasm. Then she blew out a breath in a huff, and forced herself to calm down again. "You'll have to excuse me. I've just recovered from having my intelligence reduced to that of a lower order primate for several days. The experience has left me a tad miffed."  
  
"I... see," Dr. Patterson responded, not knowing quite what to say. "Ummm... I notice that your antennae came back." Indeed, the primatologist could see the irradient blue structures had indeed returned, if set far back on the head, much like the ears of a cat were when the feline in question is irritated. This was nicely synchronized with the scowl she was getting.  
  
"They're called 'strakes.' Faeries have antennae, gremlins have strakes." Tangent flicked hers out to the side, and then flexed them back up to their more normal angle of projection.  
  
"Faeries?" Dr. Patterson asked. Aliens she could believe in. Those had been showing up for the past fifteen years, raiding small towns and villages all over the world when they could get past X-Com's security net. Faeries were another matter entirely. "Like in Tinkerbell?"  
  
"Who?"  
  
Dr. Patterson spent the next several hours explaining the story of Peter Pan to the being that had identified itself as being a gremlin. While she was doing so, several other doctors, scientists, and a team of armed agents had arrived, all of which were noted by Tangent, then ignored.  
  
"So you're saying that this faerie, Tinkerbell, who couldn't speak and had this dandruff problem, had to be revived by children clapping their hands and saying that they believed in her?"  
  
"Well, more ot less..."  
  
Tangent fell back on her ass and laughed her head off while rolling on the ground for several minutes...  
  
* * *  
  
Another week had passed, although this time Tangent had actually conceded to wear something. A lab coat to be specific, but it was at least something. Tangent found the discomfort of the humans around her when she left the front of it open amusing. It had been one thing when they thought that she might be just an alien animal that just had a close resemblance to an adult human woman. They could say that they were just watching an animal like they would in a zoo, and push the embarrassment away.  
  
Tangent's proving to be sentient after all, and a friendly and personable one at that, had left many of the personnel at the reseach facility feeling highly ashamed for having thought of her as an animal in the first place. That she was from a highly technical culture that viewed clothing as a purely optional concept, and thought that their taboo about nudity was cute was only more disconcerting.  
  
"So Faeries don't require people to believe in them in order to stay healthy?" Dr. Patterson asked their 'guest'. She had remained on the examination team, despite the discovery that Tangent was not simply some alien pet or food animal that had somehow gotten loose, largely because she had managed to establish a rapport with the gremlin. The two were walking around the research facility under armed escort. Mostly to stretch their legs for a bit, as far as the doctor knew.  
  
"Not usually, no, although this Tinkerbell may have been under a curse. I'm not well versed in the magical arts, as gremlins tend to be more technologically oriented, but such a curse *is* possible as far as I know." Tangent, having been scanning the wiring in the corridors during their walk, now knew where all of the cameras, hidden or otherwise, were. She also knew which floor tiles were pressure sensitive, how often the guards made radio checks, and which doors required an electronic code to open.  
  
Admittedly, she *could* have been treated far worse while she had been nonsentient for the past week. Dr. Patterson had treated her with the same dignity and respect that she gave every primate that she had studied. Dr. Parks had considered her to be a particularly dumb animal though, having been of the opinion that she had been alien livestock. And Dr. Ikari seemed to believe that she had the same general value as a radish, and had treated her as such.  
  
In fact, he still did, which was why Tangent was planning to leave so soon. Not that he didn't treat most people that way, but Tangent didn't really want to be in the same building as the man for long periods of time. Another week as a captive after she had recovered her mental bearings had helped her finish the healing process. Sticking around had showed her that some of the FBAM agents were much better shots than she had given them credit for, so simply shrinking down to a foot or less in height and manifesting her wings to fly away was somewhat less appealing than it had been before.  
  
Besides, the technical challenge of a night-time escape while at near human size intrigued her...  
  
* * *  
  
Dr. Gendo Ikari revewed the records that had been accumulated about the new alien. The fact that it claimed to be a gremlin and related to faerie kind was laughable. That an alien knew so much about human myths, and had tried to play on them was disturbing. Tests done on the cell cultures and blood samples taken from this 'Tangent' were proving to be alarming. The special gasses that X-Com had come up with to clear an area of Uglies wouldn't effect her in the slightest.  
  
In fact, the cell cultures seemed to thrive on the various toxins that they had tried to use on them. Nor did oxygen poor environments bother the cells, as long as they had *something* to exchange chemical energy with. Speculations abounded as to whether 'Tangent' could survive unaided on Venus or Mars.  
  
The discovery of the effect of highly concentrated magnetic fields had on her intelligence level had been serendipitous, although Gendo's attempts to find out how long it would take to wipe out even her most primal mental functions had been halted. That she had recovered in about a week was disappointing, but any period in which this new race could be mentally crippled, however temporarily, was a plus. So Gendo had initiated a new project to develop concentrated magenetic field projectors, or what was now being called the Magnetic Lance project.  
  
That 'Tangent' seemed to be friendly and inclined to be generally helpful was not a concern of his. She wasn't human. She wasn't even from Earth. Aliens had captured his wife and had started eating her as he looked helplessly on, fifteen years ago, when a small group of idealists had tried to make first contact with visitors from beyond.  
  
As far as Gendo was concerned, killing aliens was far too good for them. They had to be destroyed. Humiliated and made to feel as helpless and weak as they had made him feel all those years ago. Made to suffer slow and agonizing deaths after long periods of torture, as had happened to his late wife while he had watched from captivity.  
  
Dr. Gendo Ikari didn't care who got in his way. All aliens had to be either enslaved or destroyed! Only that would put the memory of his departed wife to rest.  
  
General Prosek of X-Com had similar views, Gendo knew, so arranging for X-Com agents to be able to claim 'Tangent' for one of that organizations research facilities, where she would be tested to destruction was not something that bothered Dr. Ikari in the least bit. Tangent would die her slow and painful death, over a period of days or perhaps even a month or two.  
  
Dr. Gendo Ikari could only smile at the thought...  
  
* * *  
  
Tangent remained blissfully unaware of the plans regarding her ultimate fate going on around her. She left some notes on the basics for a working faster-than-light drive as a parting gift in return for their hospitality. Nothing major, just something that could get them to 1.2 past the speed of light and back. That would be sufficient to give them an advantage over the would be invaders, as the 'Uglies' had only a gravitic drive that could propel them at about 89% of lightspeed.  
  
The version of the artificial gravity generator that the humans of this Terra had reverse engineered couldn't yet match the original versions, speed-wise, but they *would* permit the basic FTL drive to be safely used by human crews. The war for control of the Sol system was about to take a drastic turn as the natives were soon to pick up a massive home court advantage.  
  
A fact that added a perky smile to Tangent's lips as she wandered down the facilities corridors one night, deftly staying out of camera arcs, off of pressure plates, and avoiding laser grids. Most of the electronic locks were shielded, preventing her from scanning what their codes were and simply feeding them back to deactivate them. She had debated about either reducing down and using the ventilation system for her entire escape, or simply ripping the lock panels off of the walls and rewiring the doors manually while by-passing the alarms.  
  
The first would either be too easy, assuming that the ventilation system was both interconnected and extended to the outside, or pointless if the system was self-contained and partitioned. The second would probably be detected too soon after she had passed an area, provided that the panels weren't rigged to set off an alarm if torn from the walls. So she compromised by using the ventilation shafts that she could fit into without shrinking, and sneeking around until she found unshielded panels that she could scan and actvate.  
  
While Tangent was having fun with her grand escape attempt, she remained totally unaware of the X-Com extraction team that was currently making their way into the facility and towards the cell where she was supposed to be. They were just ariving at the cell as Tangent was passing the front desk.  
  
"Good night, Officer Rhodes!" Tangent waved cheerfully as she walked out the door.  
  
"Good Night Dr. Tan... HEY!"  
  
Tangent stuck her tongue out mischieviously as she picked up her pace. Officer Rhodes had activated the alarms, as expected, stirring up the facilities' security. Pure harmless fun, but she was sure to pop down to about six inches in height and flit off before any of the guards could be directed outside. The empty lab coat was found moments later, but it was too dark to see her tiny form as it flew off into the distance.  
  
The discovery of the X-Com extraction team and Dr. Gendo Ikari's involvement in getting them to where they were discovered was pure serendipity. Proving that luck flows both ways.  
  
As the notes that Tangent had been left behind had a message of farewell to Dr. Emily Patterson, she was credited with the first friendly contact between Humanity and an alien race. This information was leaked to the general public about a month later by Col. Norris, who was growing more and more fed up with X-Com. People across the world saw the recorded interviews between Dr. Emily Patterson and the perky little gremlin (most of which were from after Tangent started wearing the labcoat, and the few from before then had discrete visual distortion blocks for public viewing).  
  
Much to X-Com's annoyance, Col. Norris was not reprimanded and removed from active service. It seemed that after fifteen years of war, the public was ready to hear news of friendly aliens. Col. Norris and Dr. Patterson had become instant celebrities.  
  
When the FTL drive tests proved to be successful the following year, General Norris smiled slightly. The new ships produced were part of the new Sol System Defense Force, which was largely subplanting X-Com as the front line against alien invasion. That the SSDF received more international support than X-Com did was just the icing on the cake...  
  
Thus, the world was primed to give another set of visitors a chance when they showed up about three years later, with a faster-than-light drive capable of achieving 1.5 times lightspeed. Maybe they didn't look as close to humans as Tangent had, but they weren't of the same race as the Uglies either. Nor, for that matter, were they on the same side as the Uglies, as they had promptly moved against one of the Invader's ships that had surprised a native (human) patrol ship.  
  
Peacful contact had been established, alliances made, and two evil Empires toppled before they could grow too large to stop easily. One that had been based on Earth, under the cover of the International Extraterrestrial Command's defensive mission, and the other based in space, by a race that found other intelligent races to be a fine delicacy.  
  
Tangent had never even seen an Ugly, and had helped to topple their plans. If she had, the memories of her former human self might have dredged up another name for what they were:  
  
Ilythids. They may not have actually been the race thad had been described by the AD&D role-playing game system, but they sure did resemble them...  
  
The other race would have been harder for her to identify specifically. They bore a strong resemblace to velociraptors, only with more cranial capacity, an extra set of arms, and omnivorous teeth. They could sing with great range and beauty, and declared the similarly musical humans to be their sister race in the stars.  
  
None of which Tangent was aware of, as she had long since located an old faerie mound whose mushroom ring had nearly grown too far to retain a suitable amount of symmetry...  
  
* * *  
  
Tangent hadn't been expecting Underhill to be so... lifeless. There *had* been faeries here before, the scattered bones of the fey long since dead showed her that much, but what had killed them all? She didn't stick around to find out.  
  
Passing through a few more veils, until she started seeing life again, Tangent pondered on where to go next. She had originally set out to try to hook up with either Grey or the Pheonix Mage, but the chances of actually encountering either of them or a suitable analogue had dropped drastically once she had been dragged out of her dimension of origin. She couldn't go back, as her experiments with traveling between the faerie and mortal realms there had proved that all access via the routes that she could use were nonexistent at that end. A hill was just a hill, and a ring of mushrooms was just a ring of mushrooms, even if they were found together.  
  
Actually staying in the faerie realms was out of the question. Gremlins were pretty much shunned by the members of the Sidhe Courts as being too strongly alligned with cold iron and technology. Few even chose to acknowledge that gremlins were derived from the old Fey Tuin race as well, although those that did often referred to them as techno-sprites.  
  
Relations with the Unsidhe Courts were worse, as they merely tended to enslave gremlins to their own ends. Adding to Tangent's problem in specific was the fact that she used to be a mortal. As souls were not destroyed by transformation into other beings, that meant that Tangent still had one. This would make her a prize for those who could sense such. Granted, gremlins were also among the most toxic faeries around, due to their inclination for supplementing their diets with the strongest poisons and pollutants that they could find. More of a method of self-defense rather than offense. Few things, even of magical nature, wanted to eat something that could eat a South American Poison Arrow Frog and ask for seconds...  
  
Still, torturing one until she gave up her soul would probably be fun for one of the Unsidhe faeries, so Tangent didn't actually want to encounter one while travelling underhill. So it could be understood why she jumped through the veil into another mortal realm as soon as she she spotted the troll. Well, that and the fact that trolls were among the few things that would not think twice about eating a gremlin...  
  
End Chapter one 


	2. Arriving in Aramar

Tangent's Tangents  
  
A Self Insert Fanfict from Beyond by Tangent!  
  
Based on a possible after effect of "Otaku PC" by Metroanime.  
  
Expanded upon with the express permission of Metroanime.  
  
Possible additional scenes by Metroanime (doubtful, but you never know...)  
  
Pre-reading and editing assistance by:  
  
Metroanime;  
  
Lord Talon;  
  
Howard Melton;  
  
Nevrmore;  
  
And some guy named Steve  
  
DISCLAIMER: 'Ranma ½' and all characters therein belong to Rumiko Takahashi, Shogagukan, Kitty, and Viz Video. 'Sailor Moon' and all characters therein belong to Naoko Takeuchi and Toei Animation Co. Ltd. Tenchi, Bubblegum Crisis, Riding Bean, Cyber Punk, Shadowrun, X-Com, and sundry others all belong to their respective creators and associated companies as well (which should worry some of you...). The original concept for the Otaku PC fusion was Metroanime's. This fanfict has been produced for my own enjoyment and to pass on without profit. Other characters that come into play in this fanfict may or may not be pulled from other sources (including other fanficts, RPGs, manga, anime, literature, or possibly even *GASP* American comic books!).  
  
CHAPTER TWO:  
  
Tangent yelped as she experienced an affinity for a glass of water.  
  
Or, it might be more proper to say, she experienced sensations normally reserved for such a glass of water. Such as being swallowed and speeding down a tube as a fluid. This was then followed by something unlike being a glass of water, which was landing with a resounding *thump* on a round section of some sort of pavement.  
  
"Owie..." Tangent rubbed her rump, which had taken the brunt of the landing. "Well, any dimensional transport you can walk away from is a good one, I suppose," she mumbled as she waited for the little squiggly lights and dots to retreat from her vision. The crowd noise was obvious even before then, but at first she thought it merely more disorientation.  
  
Tangent hadn't actually been around as long as her three-hundred-sixty plus years of accumulated memories would otherwise seem to indicate. Roughly a third of the imprinted experience had to do with an analogue in a Star Wars timeline, from the twilight decades of the Old Republic. Another third dealt with her life in a Galactic Planetary Alliance universe, which wasn't nearly as large as the Old Republic, and had fewer known races, but had meta-powered beings. Yet another third was from a Terra which had super heroes such as the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, and the Rangers. Even so, she never actually directly experienced any of these worlds as her memories of having done so actually belonged to those same analogues. A fact that she was at least subconsciously aware of on some level.  
  
Even the first real dimension that Tangent had visited that wasn't her one of origin wasn't particularly impressive to her. Granted, most of that time had been spent dealing with one sort of mental trauma or another, pretty much souring most of the experience. The paths of Underhill and the local veils of the faerie realms connected to that particular mortal world were stark and lifeless, impressive only with their morbid sterility. Then, just when she had passed through enough veils to reach a living faerie realm, a troll had appeared, causing her to retreat into a random mortal plane. Mortal plane being defined as any universe that was neither Heaven, Hell, astral, ethereal, nor fey. This actually left quite a bit of leeway, when all was said and done.  
  
Thus, even as the dimensionally wandering techno-sprite that she thought that she was, the gremlin gaped at the scene around her.  
  
The first thing that struck her about the buildings was that they were predominantly green. The rock used for these buildings obviously had a high amount of copper oxide present, though there was reddish and brownish brick buildings as well. The street below had a golden sheen, but as she *was* a gremlin she could tell it was actually some iron pyrite imbedded in the stone that made it look as if there were streaks of gold in the pavement.  
  
There was also a lot of wood present. What made the buildings strange was that the City Planning Commission had obviously been deranged if not merely absent altogether. Many of the buildings looked as if they could have been plopped down straight out of "Slayers" or some AD&D world. The exceptions were what made Tangent wonder for the sanity of the local government.  
  
A tall building of gray stone had gargoyles and spikes that made it look like something out of Gotham City or perhaps Paradigm City in "Big O." Not too far away, the red torii archways and peaked roof of a Shinto shrine, beyond that was a small tower equipped with some sort of dock arrangement about five floors up. That there was a sailboat in the process of being tied to one of those docking cradles only helped identify the structure.  
  
All of this was a distant second to the truly bizarre part of this scene - the crowd.  
  
There was a crowd of what could only be D&D style Hobgoblins, wearing military uniforms and marching in precision as the crowd parted to either side of them. That one of them was carrying a *Klingon* sword was strange but somehow looked perfectly fitting for this crowd.  
  
There was a three foot tall bipedal mouse wearing what looked like Colonial gear (including vest and coat), apparently trying to haggle with a lamp merchant who looked an *awful lot* like a Velociraptor from "Jurassic Park". The Velociraptor, Tangent idly noted, was wearing a monocle in one eye and his expression was clearly dubious despite the very different facial configuration.  
  
There was a centaur mantis arguing loudly with a group of elves, apparently regarding the price of some sort of flute or recorder that the mantis sold at his (her?) shop.   
  
There was a dark-skinned elf playing cards with a dwarf, and apparently not doing well from the elf's frown and the dwarf's grin. The same café had three groups of very curvaceous women that Tangent tentatively identified as Nymphs of some kind, mostly due to their general lack of apparel and the 'feel' that they had. Some of them were nude, and most of the rest merely nearly so, with attire designed more to enhance their natural beauty rather than for any sense of modesty. The few who were modestly attired for whatever reason still had the same feel as the others, so Tangent still tentatively classified them as nymphs as well. The waitress was nearly as curvy, and had at least three knives on her person that Tangent could see from where she was.  
  
The crowd walking by continually was just as varied. There were dwarves and centaur-mantises and humanoid mice. There were winged elves and dark elves and even a couple of sea elves (though this latter were obviously experiencing some difficulties with their current environment). There were near-humans whose hair moved like flame, and others with fur and tails and feline derivation. There were bipedal dinosaurs and pixies and dryads and more.   
  
"Excuse me," said a voice deeper than the human average. "Miss?"  
  
It took Tangent a moment to blink and realize that she was being addressed. Also notable was the shadow that had just fallen over her. She turned and looked up. And up. And up. And then up some more. Tangent was used to dealing with beings larger than herself. Her natural height was about eight inches, give or take a sixteenth of an inch, although she could get as short as six inches to as tall as her current four feet. Some beings were exceptionally large though, and still impressed her with there overall size and mass.  
  
The face was obvious. Broken flattened nose, one tusk jutting up from a lower lip, eyes the color of the bottom of a deep well. An ogre. An especially big variety that looked like the sort who would bench press truck engines. Of the tractor-trailer variety.  
  
"Eeep," said Tangent, not especially feeling up to fighting off an ogre at this time.  
  
"You're blocking the teleport receptacle, miss, would you care to mosey on?" The ogre indicated the platform that Tangent had landed on.  
  
"Oh, of course," said Tangent, quickly moving off. A glance behind revealed the ogre taking a rag out of one pocket and cleaning off the intricate pattern carved into the platform before ambling off. Tangent checked her skin, and decided that it was probably time for another bath. Gremlins were, as a rule, rather clean entities as their bodies broke down and neutralized all sorts of toxic substances. Still, gremlin sweat could sometimes get mildly corrosive. Not enough to be harmful to living tissues, but metals and plastics could be slowly deteriorated if kept in contact with these acidic oils. Plants, on the other hand, often benefited from these same oils, so a dry 'bath' involving rubbing herself with leaves still attached to a tree or bush would do as well as a more traditional bath involving water.  
  
Of course, if she could get some lye and or pumice soap, a good steaming hot soak sounded suitably relaxing. Maybe even setting aside some of the lye for a tasty mug or two. Still, it wasn't particularly urgent at the moment, and if she didn't keep moving at least a little, she'd get trampled in the crowd.  
  
Moving with the general flow of people, Tangent was able to see how bizarre her environment truly was. A ship went floating overhead, despite the fact that it was breaking laws of aerodynamics in so doing. The ship was built to resemble some huge barracuda and was made largely of wood. Her senses were able to tell that the fish-ship had some odd combination of technology and magic keeping it up, but not the details. Something worth looking into later perhaps.  
  
The crowd triggering a touch of claustrophobia, Tangent popped down to her true height of eight inches and manifested her wings, flying up to the height of the majority of the roofs nearby - about three stories. Away from the crowded and cramped street, she could see literally dozens of the aircraft, everything from simple barges to ornate fantastic craft modeled on either fish designs or birds of some kind. Magical carpets and brooms competed for airspace with winged elves and ships that could have been sketched out by Jules Verne or H.G. Wells. Sylphs and pixies could be seen flitting about on their own errands, along with some who were clearly wizards using spells to bypass the crowds below.   
  
Something else beckoned her attention. A clock tower thrust up from the labyrinth of streets below, showing the time as being six o' clock. Why then was the sun directly overhead?  
  
Another dark shadow passed overhead, and Tangent suppressed a flinch. A dragon, huge and powerful looking, cruising through the air without more than a glance at her. If that much. You could never be sure with dragons.  
  
Tangent blinked at the realization. Here, in *this* city, even though she had seen no fellow gremlins - she would merely be slightly exotic. Unlike the last world, she could fit in here with nary a care. The question remained - what now?  
  
* * *  
  
Captain Penn Straum shook his head at the unintentional antics of one of his new deckhands. "'Take my nephew for a voyage or two, Straum,' he said, 'the boy will be a natural with the lines and rigging,' he said." The grizzled dwarven captain snorted. "What the addle-brained ninny neglects to tell me is that Davin is barely of age and is still going through one of those growth spurts that turn the exceptionally awkward into the truly graceful! Assuming that they even survive the experience!"  
  
Capt. Straum watched as the lanky elven lad in question tripped over his own feet while attempting to secure one of the mooring lines to the air dock. Something that Straum would have to have words with his first mate about, but the lad *had* seemed to be getting over his awkward period lately, so perhaps their wasn't anything untoward about the matter after all. Still, the boy's family probably expected him back in reasonably good health at some point, and telling them that the lad had gotten himself killed in Emeraldis while attempting to perform a routine task would probably be a bad thing.  
  
Just as the dwarven captain was about to call out for one of the crew to relieve the young elf and send him up to the ship (and relative safety doing something else useful instead), the boy did indeed stumble again. This time falling off of the air dock all together. Capt. Straum noted in mute horror that the safety line that was supposed to prevent green hands from falling to their deaths had somehow become wrapped around the lad's neck.  
  
Sure enough, the poor elven lad stopped, but oddly enough without the sudden jerk. Capt. Straum looked on in stunned disbelief as the line that would have doomed the boy was still slack, Davin having been caught by a green woman who had suddenly appeared standing on the side of the wall.  
  
* * *  
  
Tangent was still flitting around, looking at the strange air ships, when she saw one of the various linesmen stumble and fall off of his perch. Zipping over to intercept the unfortunate individual, she popped back up to her four foot size, planted her feet on the wall, and extended an arm out. She was still nearly knocked off the wall when she caught the fellow though, and it took her a moment to steady herself after having slid back several feet. Once she was sure of her bearing, Tangent started walking up the wall to where he had fallen from.  
  
"Ah, thanks miss..." the boy halted awkwardly as he stared at how the green woman with the tail was simply walking up the wall as if it were the ground. Sure, there were spells that simulated spider-like abilities, but all of the ones that he heard about required that the recipient actually crawl along the surface in question like a spider.  
  
"You're welcome!" Tangent chirped, happy to have helped. "You might want to unwrap the safety line from around your neck," she further advised. "That could prove nasty of even fatal if nobody is around to catch you. Besides, your grip is squishing my breast, so I'd thank you to at least shift it to some other location."  
  
"Oh! Ah... sure!" the young elf stammered, embarrassed. He hastily removed the line from his neck and shifted about uncertainly, not knowing where to hold on to this girl once he was done. "Err... My name is Davin Quesyph..."  
  
"And I'm Tangent. Pleased to meet you!"  
  
"If you don't mind me asking... How are you doing that?"  
  
"Doing what?"  
  
"Y'know... Walking up the wall like that?"  
  
"Well, first I put one foot in front of the other," Tangent explained as if to someone *really* young, "and then I do the same with the other foot. Just repeat the cycle as needed and pretty soon simple bipedal locomotion will get you just about anywhere you care to go..."  
  
"I meant on the wall..." Davin clarified uncertainly.  
  
"Oh, that! Localized gravitic anomaly!" Tangent beamed at the lad, glad he wasn't as slow as he first appeared to be.  
  
"And that means?" Davin wondered why he was asking. She was obviously some kind of spell caster, given her vocabulary, and she might do something dreadful if he kept asking her how she did things. For example, she might answer his questions.  
  
Sure enough, Tangent launched happily into a lecture about how gremlins could stand, walk, or even run along any surface that they are at least in rough contact with, as if that surface was where the plane of gravity was pulling them. Jumping with this ability wasn't advisable unless the gremlins in question could either be sure of a 'landing' point, or could manifest wings and fly.  
  
Davin came to the conclusion that Tangent was indeed a mage of some sort, as she continued her lecture even after setting him back down on the dock he had fallen from. Granted, she changed topics from describing gremlin abilities to what kind of knots would be useful for mooring lines, but Davin had been hearing that one for nearly a month now anyway...  
  
* * *  
  
Captain Penn Straum was sufficiently happy at the survival of young Davin that all Tangent had to do was mention that she was thirsty and they ended up in a tavern.   
  
Well, *after* an interesting docking at some weird airport. Square swimming pool like "docking pads" on one side, pavement and what looked like hammocks elsewhere.   
  
This particular ship landed in one of the little ponds. It turned out to be a cargo transport carrying something called "toofa leaves" and clockwork mechanisms from someplace called "Nihon".   
  
Which brought Tangent to one of the taverns located around the "airport" looking over the odd drink list.   
  
There was small beer, of course. Also ales and beers and wines, feywine and something called "skullcrush", another thing called "dwarvil" and something else called "hobgoblin cocktail."   
  
"Got anything with arsenic and some trace metals?" Tangent asked the waitress, not terribly surprised that a waitress around here was a seven foot tall human female radiating magic from several concealed weapons.   
  
The waitress gave an inquiring look to the dwarf who merely shrugged. "I'll see what I can find."  
  
"If not, I'll have whatever's the most toxic," Tangent amended, hoping not to put the waitress too far out of her way.  
  
"So," Capt. Straum started once the waitress had left, "Ye seem to have some experience with ships, Miss Tangent."  
  
"Some," Tangent admitted, wondering how to explain the multiple templates that comprised her collective experience. After a moment, she decided to just treat it as if she was a melding of all of them, which was true enough anyway. "My grandfather used to take me sailing from time to time. I was supposed to get his boat after he passed on, but grandma sold it before it could be turned over to me..."  
  
"That's terrible!" Davin exclaimed.  
  
"Depends on your point of view," Tangent stated. "I was too young to take responsibility for it at the time anyway, although I'd have liked to have at least gotten some say in the matter." She shifted tact from her former human existence at this point, combining that of two of her other aspects instead. "Anyway, I got some more experience serving on nautical vessels for Veridia, as well as on aircrafts for Silica. When it didn't eat into my training that is."  
  
"So you *are* a spell caster!" Davin proclaimed, feeling that his earlier observation had been correct. Capt. Straum said nothing, being content to listen for now.  
  
"In a manner of speaking, although not much more than any other warrior caste gremlin is."  
  
"Gremlin?" Davin had never heard of gremlins. Capt. Straum, on the other hand, had heard of them, but knew of several varieties. Some innately good, some just as naturally evil, and most deriving from faerie kind. A handful of the rest where actually incorrectly identified as gremlins when they were actually something else, whether they were imps or transformed mogwai.  
  
"Techno-sprites, derived from the old Fey Tuin race that the faeries came from," Tangent explained. "We branched off due to our affinities for cold-iron and toxins. The records are poor, but it is commonly believed that our ancestors were cursed to become gremlins due to these immunities. It's hard to say for sure though."  
  
"Like tinker gnomes?" Davin was horrified, having had several bad encounters with tinker gnome inventions already.  
  
"Don't be insulting," Tangent admonished. "A gremlin's prerogative is making and breaking, and a gremlin's vocation is to do either of those well. Tinker gnome devices are amusing, but please, don't compare us with a race of self-defeatists!"  
  
"What do you mean?" Davin asked.  
  
"What she means, lad," Capt. Straum interjected, "is that a tinker gnome that actually succeeds in completing their life quest and invents something that works, is considered to be a failure."  
  
"Well, I *will* admit that, on average, tinker gnomes are more creative than most gremlins. We are very good at tinkering with and repairing existing devices, or demolishing things, but few of us have the inventive spark to actually come up with something new. That's why we like to hang around humans and other creative races so much. We have this great drive to be industrious, to build and destroy things, but without that creative spark to direct us we tend to be at loose ends..."  
  
The conversation was interrupted briefly by the arrival of their drinks. Tangent sipped hers and noted with some disappointment that the toxins were purely alcoholic in nature. Not that she was drinking to get a buzz, as alcohol did nothing of the sort for gremlins (some breeds drank rocket fuel to relax, some required neurotoxins to simply knock them out for a while - Tangent's variety tended to get sleepy with chocolate). No, what Tangent was after was something to make her too poisonous to eat for a while, which was the main reason most gremlins seek to supplement their diets with toxins.  
  
Most alcohols simply weren't lethal enough, and even when they were, tended to be metabolized and broken down into something harmless too quickly by gremlin physiologies. Not that the practice did much good on worlds like Silica, where the native flora and fauna was so poisonous that a gremlin couldn't hope to become toxic enough for the wildlife to consider them inedible.  
  
"If ye be needin' work, I could always use another hand that knows her way around a ship," Capt. Straum offered. "Ye said that ye were warrior caste?"  
  
"Yep! Sixty plus years of training in the Alpha/Omega School of Weapon Mastery, some training in unarmed combat, and Master Marksman with any ranged weapon that I can aim myself!" Tangent stated proudly.  
  
"Well, how good can she be, if she doesn't have any equipment..." Davin mumbled, looking the nude gremlin over jealously, feeling that his position on the Hammers High was being threatened. Capt. Straum silenced him with a glare.  
  
"I don't have any equipment because I don't have anything that can change scale when I do. It's a bit awkward traveling with anything to have to have two or more sizes for everything," Tangent stated. "Besides, my instructors in the Alpha/Omega School of Weapon Mastery would be disappointed in me if I couldn't make a weapon to use in a battle that I had enough warning about."  
  
"Make a weapon?" Davin was a bit taken back by this. "Like a club or a staff or something, right?"  
  
"Staves are good, but there's also swords, axes, pole arms, crossbows, siege engines..."  
  
"You can..."  
  
"Kid, the motto of the Alpha/Omega School is: To build a weapon is to know it, and you must first construct one of its type if you want to learn to use it. Live with this weapon. Eat, sleep and breathe with it. Dance, sing and celebrate with it. Mourn, grieve and suffer with it. To master a weapon, you must then destroy what you have constructed. For then you will know its beginning and end."  
  
"Perhaps ye'd be better off signin' up with the Shadarian Explorer Corps instead, lass," Capt. Straum sighed. "I couldn't possibly pay ye what ye'd be worth to a ship like mine."  
  
"If you say so..." Tangent replied uncertainly.  
  
"Aye, I say so," Capt. Straum insisted. "Besides, I may end up bein' paid to haul yer ass around on my ship anyway, and in any event ye'd be makin' more than I could pay ye straight up! We'll just head for City Hall on the morrow and get ye an application. Ye should do well, as I don't know of any other gremlins in the S.E.C. Ye could explore some of the toxic zones for them at the very least."  
  
"Well," Tangent admitted, "it sounds interesting at any rate..."  
  
END CHAPTER TWO... 


End file.
